Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, believes that quantum computing, a technology that could revolutionize industries from medicine to materials science, may be closer than some experts think. In a recent interview on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid podcast, Gates suggested that useful quantum computers could arrive in as little as three to five years. “There is the possibility that he [Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang] could be wrong. There is the possibility in the next three to five years that one of these techniques would get enough true logical Qubits to solve some very tough problems. And Microsoft is a competitor in that space,” Gates said on the podcast. The race to build the first truly practical quantum computer has drawn significant attention from tech giants like Microsoft and Google, as well as from specialized companies like Nvidia. Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, believes that progress is accelerating, even if the timeline remains uncertain. Quantum computing, in simple terms, uses the principles of quantum mechanics to perform calculations far faster than today’s classical computers. The key component, qubits (quantum bits), differ from regular bits in that they can can exist in a probabilistic state between 0 and 1, offering vast computational power. Practical quantum computing would be the use of a quantum machine to successfully complete calculations in a time that classical computers and supercomputers could not match.

Full opinion : Bill Gates believes practical quantum computing could arrive in the next three to five years, challenging longer timelines suggested by others.